Installing a second HDD for gaming.....a little confused

[jpoll_86]

Hi Guys
I have just sucessfully built my new gaming rig (my first one ever I might add) and I am about to install a second HDD (a 2TB one) I have my first hard drive dedicated to my operating system and I want to have my 2TB dedicated to installing my games and programs.
what I want to know is how hard is it to install games and programs onto a second drive since the default drive is always C/: or C/rogram files. do I need to create a program files folder on my secondary drive to make it work? or what steps do I need to take to make sure my games/programs will run off my second drive?

any help will be greatly appreciated

 

[tomatthe]

Basically just click the Advanced option whenever installing something and it will give you the option to specify where it is installed to. You might want to have a "Games" folder on the drive you add just to keep things organized a bit, but that's up to you. You do not need to create a program files folder on the 2nd drive. You can change a registry key to make the default install location be your 2nd drive if that's something you would want.

 

[jpoll_86]

actually that would really help how would I go about making my second drive the default for programs in the registry?

 

[tomatthe]

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-windows_programs/how-do-you-change-the-default-installation/73450b25-d794-4f18-9add-75253b893343

I have not tested that it was just the first that came up when searching.

As mentioned below you can wreck Windows from messing with the registry, but it's not terribly difficult, and if you're building your own machines it's something you should probably learn anyway.

 

[quilciri]

I would recommend staying out of the registry unless you already know what you're doing.